


Five Tattoos Ray Kowalski Would Love To Get

by osaraba



Category: due South
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osaraba/pseuds/osaraba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ray listens to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tPGljkR_w">Sleep Walk</a> (1959) by Santo & Johnny.</p></blockquote>





	Five Tattoos Ray Kowalski Would Love To Get

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akamine_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/gifts).



  1. Ray wants to be able to capture the way Fraser speaks; the way he tilts his head; the way he rolls his eyes. There are a lot of things about Fraser he'd like to somehow narrow down, draw up, and slap on himself like a sign of mutual ownership. But he thinks that Fraser's _words_ are what makes him so amazing. Ray is waiting for Fraser to say something, something that Ray will recognize, something he'll _know_ when he hears it. And that's what he'll get inked. Nutcase that he is -- ask anyone -- but Fraser's able to come up with the most eloquent, articulate, _inspiring_ words -- words that _make a difference_.

Hey.

Maybe that's what he'll get.

  

  2. Ray loves upbeat music. Anything that can get his shoulders jumping, his hips swinging, his feet tapping, moving, pivoting, and then the world spinning. And he's dancing. But despite the dancing feet he's got under his rug, he doesn't want that under his skin.

There's this song. It's not his usual style, but it's one of those old songs from the 50s or 60s that you somehow know even though you don't know the name of it, or who wrote it or played it. He kind of inherited it from a friend who was going to throw out his vinyls when he moved and didn't take his record player with him.

He still doesn't know who wrote it or played it or when it was made because the label had come off the record a long time ago, some of the adhesive left on in streaking bits.

When he plays it, this song, he thinks of lazy days, nights on the beach, clichéd scenes from 60s movies -- all things his life was never like. But it's not sad, or not mostly anyway. It's somehow relaxing. He wants to move to it, but it also makes him feel lethargic in a satisfied way. Kind of like -- not that everything's _right_ with the world -- but that there isn't anything _wrong enough_ to have to get up for.

And he's kind of embarrassed, because it makes him think of flowers. Or this one kind of big-petaled flower. And he's seen a lot of tattoos of them, so sometimes he thinks, maybe. But they're always on women.

So maybe not.

  

  3. For a long time (and occasionally still) Ray considers getting _something permanent_ to remind him of Beth Botrelle and that whole fucked up case. He can never figure out what kind of image would be the one thing to represent everything he did and didn't do and the span of time it all encompassed. He's not sure whether that's because he knows he'd just be torturing himself and he doesn't deserve it. Or whether he deserves it but is too scared to do it because he wants to be able to forget some day. His thoughts circle each other and sometimes all he can do to make it stop is go bust a perp or bust someone's face at the gym, but you can't really do that, so it's sometimes the punching bag and sometimes the bar.
  

  4. When he was younger, when his dad was teaching him how to rebuild engines and refurbish the GTO, was one of the few times he didn't actually mind spending long hours at the library. They had some old books and magazines and Ray spent a surprising amount of time researching what would later become his own beloved car. (He thinks it's probably a good thing he discovered that research could be interesting, or at least not insanely boring, because sometimes it's all that gets him through the boring footwork of Detecting.)

Once, when using the microfiche machine, he came across an ad from the early 70s, boasting about the prowess of the Pontiac GTO. The Chevelle, the Cutlass, and even the Pontiac Firebird became stiff competition in the world of musclecars, but no one could out-swagger his baby -- no matter what the Firebird could do on the strip.

He thought it was kind of arrogant for a skinny teen to want it, but someday, he promised himself, he'd have the swagger to back up the words of the tattoo he was going to get.

 _Others have caught on, but they haven't caught up._

  

  5. Ray is waiting to retire from the force before getting his badge and number tattooed on the inside of his right biceps. He figures until then he doesn't need it on his skin. But when the day comes he can't carry his badge around anymore, it'll feel like a part of him is lost. So he's waiting til then so it'll feel like he found it and won't ever even be able to lose it again.
  



**Author's Note:**

> Ray listens to [Sleep Walk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tPGljkR_w) (1959) by Santo & Johnny.


End file.
